Transcript: Secretary of War Hegseth announces a "line-by-line" review of 8(a) contracts
The Department spent $15.5 billion with the 8(a) program in 2025
Below is a transcript of the video that the Secretary of War Pete Hegseth posted on X and Facebook on Jan. 16, announcing the Department’s review of the 8(a) program.
When President Trump appointed me as your Secretary of War, I made you a series of promises. I promised that every single one of your taxpayer dollars would go toward one thing and one thing only: Building the most lethal fighting force on the planet. And I promised we would gut the corruptive unconstitutional, non-merit-based DEI programs that have weakened our military and distracted us from our primary mission.
I promised we would hunt down the waste, the fraud, and the abuse that is run rampant in this Department for decades, and to instead redirect that money to President Trump’s America First priorities. Well, today we are once again taking action on these promises. We’re actually taking a sledgehammer to the oldest DEI program in the federal government.
A program few people outside of Washington have ever heard of, that I hadn’t heard of. It’s called the 8(a) Program. Now, if you’re like me, you’re asking yourself what is an 8(a)? It’s a great question. 8(a) refers to the Small Business Administration’s program to assist small disadvantaged businesses owned by a socially disadvantaged individual or tribe.
End quote. Providing these small businesses with opportunities is a laudable goal, but over the decades, as it happens, the 8(a) program has morphed into swamp code words for DEI, race-based contracting. And here’s the worst part. In many, many instances, these socially disadvantaged businesses, they don’t even do work.
They take a 10%, 20%, sometimes 50% fee off the top, and then pass the contract off to a giant consulting firm, commonly known as Beltway Bandits. For decades, this program, 8(a), has been a breeding ground for fraud, and this administration is finally doing something about it. The Department of Justice under Attorney General Pam Bondi recently exposed half a billion dollars in 8(a) fraud. Treasury, led by Secretary Bessent, found another quarter billion, and their investigation is just beginning. Treasury, Justice, and the Small Business Administration under Administrator Loeffler are all actively investigating their 8(a) contracts right now. Now in the Pentagon, $100 million sole-source contracts go out the door to these 8(a) firms almost every day.
Hundred million dollar sole source contracts go out our door to these 8(a) firms almost every day. Without any competition or opportunity for anyone else to bid, the Department of War is required by law to do almost a hundred billion dollars worth of contracts per year with small businesses, including 8(a) firms.
Hmm. Seems 8(a) is quite important, but we’re not required to pay enormous brokerage fees only to have these firms pass those contracts along to giant consulting companies, and we won’t, we’re not doing this anymore. So effective immediately, I’m ordering a line-by-line review of every small-business, sole-source 8(a) contract that is over $20 million. And we’ll look at everything smaller than that too.
The Department of War has the biggest chunk of 8(a) spending by far, 10 times more than any other agency. So our cleanup. It’s gonna be 10 times tougher. It’s a two-stage mission. First, if a contract doesn’t make us more lethal, it’s gone. We have no room in our budget for wasteful DEI contracts that don’t help us win wars, period. Full stop.
Second, we’re doing away with these pass-through schemes. We’ll make sure that every small business getting a contract is the one actually doing the work, and not just some shell company funneling your money to a giant consulting firm. This approach is, of course, not meant to hurt small businesses, and that’s not the point.
America’s full of great, amazing small businesses. This is part of a larger effort to transform our acquisition ecosystem into one that makes sense for the threats we face in the 21st century. I gave a long speech about this back in November. Our goal is to spend your money to build our defense industrial base with businesses large and small that share our mission not to line the pockets of beltway fraudsters.
Or to advance the agenda of DEI apologists. Only lethality, and we’re gonna look at every single contract.